30 Days Through Afghanistan

We finally made it out of Kandahar yesterday and took a 20-minute Canadian Chinook flight here to Camp Hasum Ghar. This camp is nestled into the side of a mountain in the middle of the desert. I can tell security here is a lot different than in Kabul. This is a black out camp, meaning no lights are used at night. You can only use red lights to walk around because it’s too risky to use white light. Ken and I are starting to get closer to the bad guys, and you can really feel the difference. Good bye civilian clothes, it’s now time to armor up.

We’re in Taliban country. It took us eleven days, but we can now say we’re less than 150 yards from where the Taliban have heavy influence.I always assumed the closer you got to them, the more "war like" the environment would become. I imagined strong points like this to be under regular, heavy attack.

Without giving away any specifics, the Canadians live in a fort. It has huge walls and barbed wire and enough firepower to keep the Taliban at bay. They live and work with their Afghan National Army brothers and patrol with them daily.

I would love to say I found the IED today, but I’ll have to wait until I’m an 80-year-old grandpa. For now I have to tell the truth, the Afghan National Army Soldiers we were with found it.

It wasn’t much of a surprise, the Canadian Soldiers who are partnered with them told us last night the ANA find nine out of ten of them. It’s because they’ve been doing it for more than six years and they know these roads and the Taliban.

This morning I got up bright and early, jumped in an armored vehicle, and headed down the street with my new Canadian friends to explore the world of Afghan governance.

We entered the district center and it was the biggest one I have ever seen. I’m used to the district centers housing a few buildings behind some barbed wire. This one was huge! It was more of a secure compound with majestic mountains erupting from the earth behind it. The terrain in this country constantly astounds me.

It was another travel day for Ken and I and as we were flying over southern Afghanistan in a Canadian Chinook, I realized that now would be a good time to talk about my bosses.

I’ve been intimately familiar with close air support for years now. I’ve been a public affairs journalist during three of my deployments and each time something would happen where I would have to learn a little bit more about it. Still, I’m not a pilot and I’m nowhere near an expert on the subject.

Today was our second travel day, which basically means Ken and I were stuck in air terminals all day. It did give us a chance to catch up on the Olympics though. Traveling Afghanistan is extremely difficult. I think the only thing more difficult is finding an internet connection.

One of the militaries sayings is hurry up and wait. This morning, Ken and I were in a mad dash to the terminal because we thought we were going to be late for the flight. We get to the terminal and sit for a few hours because the plane was late.

We’ve had such an interesting day with the Swedish and Finnish provincial reconstruction team, I’m not even sure where to begin.

We were picked up by the team at 9 a.m. today and were taken to Camp Northern Lights, which is within the city of Mazer-e Sharif. From the first moment we left the gate, I could tell there was something totally different here. There was construction.

It was a little bit of a quiet day today, since Ken and I headed back to the airport. Yes, I admit it, I called Camp Marmal, Mazer-e Sharif in my Day 15 blog. I could have just changed it, but that would be cheating. Mazer-e Sharif is about a 15 minute drive from here.

Since we weren’t out on any missions today, I thought it would be a good time to talk about development in northern Afghanistan. This story really starts when Ken and I were in Western Afghanistan in January. We were on a mission through these big mountains and we were talking about natural resources in this country.

It felt like we were on a safari today and Afghanistan is gorgeous.

We rode with the Germans to a place named Tanji Marmor. A German commander went there to talk with the Afghan National Police chief about a bridge that was built there. Ken and I have been looking over at the mountains for days, and dreaming about visiting the place where the two mountains meet. There’s a small stream that runs between the two of them creating a footpath that is guarded by the ANP.

I worry sometimes that the world looks and sees only four nations involved in operations here, the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Afghanistan itself. This is one of the major reasons that Ken and I started this trip. The one thing we have learned so far is that there are so many other countries contributing as well.

No, the other countries aren’t contributing 75,000 troops towards security, but they are contributing as much as they can. Many of these little countries, like Bosnia and Herzegovinia, Croatia, and Georgia have a population of less than five million, yet they still find a way to support missions like the Balkans, Kosovo and Afghanistan.